Review: Dil Dosti Etc etc etc

1 October, 2007

BY SHUBIR RISHI

This is what happens when you watch
two movies back-to-back in a cinema
hall: your ears go numb, you become
oblivious to the giggling couples
around you, you get ravenously hungry
(even thought you’d have had hummus
and pita bread), and you immediately
want to go to sleep as soon as you
sink into those comfortable seats at
IMAX. Two things stopped me from
sinking into a slumber while watching
Manish Tiwary's Dil Dosti Etc:
I wanted to see how Jr. Shah fares as
a fair shag, and the obscene smooching
sounds coming from the people sitting
behind.

Frankly, I am quite indifferent
after watching the movie. The movie
starts of well, maintains a steady
tempo, and just ends. Not that I was
hoping an earth shattering,
miraculous, and breathtaking ending,
but then there are certain rules about
how to make good cinema, keep the
viewers interest, and give it a nice,
satisfying end. I hate inconclusive
ends, period.

So here are the lead characters:

Apoorva (Imaad Shad): The boy can
act. I say ‘boy’ because he does look
like a boy -16, 17 years, tops. Hell,
he IS a boy! Apoorva is the son of a
big businessman with lots of money,
who wanted to send his son to Yale or
Harvard, but the son chose to stay
back home because ‘he likes it here’.

Sanjay Mishra (Shreyas Talpade):
Pretty good, but doesn’t create the
same magic he did in Dor.
Sanjay is the college ‘neta’ who wants
to become top dog one day.

Kintu (Ishita Sharma): Very pretty,
very petite, and somewhat believable,
is a promiscuous schoolgirl who is
waiting for the right guy to ‘do it’
with.

Vaishali (Smriti Mishra): Vaishali
is an ageing prostitute (looks the
part, sadly) who has seen it all, and
done it all, and is waiting for her
retirement.

Prerana (Nikita Anand): Looks like
she has a chocolate or something stuck
in her lower jaw, is the daughter of a
stinking rich guy. Prerana aspires to
become a supermodel (not just a model,
mind you.)

Apoorva is a weird character who
has no real attachment for anyone and
maintains that love is a four-letter
word. He lives comfortably (thanks to
papa’s money) in the hostel, rides a
bike, and can talk to any girl
effortlessly. The last part struck me
as highly irregular. At the verge of
sounding mean, the guy looks like a
young mushroom (and not the edible
kind too), is sickly thin, and walks
like he has the weight of this world
on is shoulders. And the campus we are
talking about here is Delhi
University. Correct me if I am wrong,
I DO know that girls go for nerdy
guys. Delhi girls definitely do not
(or maybe, times changed drastically).
He just looks like somebody barely out
of school with bad masturbation habits
(budding pimples and lack of facial
hair).

His scrawny butt is saved by
Sanjay, since Sanjay is a senior in
college and one of the notorious ones,
and they bond instantly. In his search
for ‘love’, Apoorva visits the
G.B.Road brothels fairly regularly,
and chances upon Vaishali, a
prostitute past her upper thirties. He
starts liking her since she smokes
bidis and asks for money before
the ‘act’ (that’s what I think).
Sanjay comes to know of this, and is
deeply disapproving, since he has a
lot of moral fiber and rants about ‘mere
aadarsh’ and ‘mere usool’
whenever he gets a chance, to whoever
is listening.

Enter Prerana, the sexy (?) rich
bombshell, with off-shoulder dresses,
and a perpetual pout. She occasionally
models fashionable clothes at home for
her father, who openly tells her she
has a beautiful body and asks her what
will happen when she finally has to
model for lingerie (almost bordering
incest, egad!). She witnesses Sanjay
fighting his rivals, and is completely
taken by him. Thus starts a love
affair.

Meanwhile, Apoorva chances upon
Kintu (who the hell names their child
like that? Oh wait, the same people
who name their child Sulabh.) Kintu is
a schoolgirl who broke off with her
boyfriend because she can ‘feel him’
every time he comes close. She is a
horny one, nevertheless. Thus starts
yet another love story, though Apoorva
is not really interested in love.

To cut the really long story short,
the university elections are nearing,
and Sanjay is a major contender. He is
also having trouble keeping Prerana
off him, because of that moral fiber
problem. He is also not very happy
about Apoorva spending his nights at
the prostitute’s house, since he is
aware of Apoorva’s ongoing romance
with Kintu. Anyway, just for kicks, he
makes a bet with Apoorva – to bed
three different women, by the time the
election results are out. Apoorva,
being very confident, accepts. In the
meanwhile, he has started visiting
Kintu’s house, for tuitions, under the
watchful eye of her mother.

The first shag is easy, since it’s
a paid one. That is the time when
Apoorva bids goodbye to Vaishali
(unofficially, but we know we’ll never
see her again), and rides away on his
bike in the dirty by lanes of Old
Delhi. The second shag happens when
Kintu’s mother is out (though he has
to leave hurriedly after the act,
since she suspects something and come
back). I shall say no more about the
third shag, since it is supposedly
crucial to the plot (Not that I am
imploring you to go see the movie.)

I was disappointed. Actually, I
didn’t know what to feel, when the
movie was finally over. Director
Manish Tiwary (with a Y) started off
well enough, but lost it in the first
fifteen minutes of the movie. After
that, the movie just becomes a
documented tour of Delhi (Hauz Khas,
Humayun’s Tomb, Khan market, Old
Delhi, Connaught Place, Delhi
University campus). I really could not
fathom what the director wanted to
tell. Misguided youth? Hardly. Sex in
the times of computers? No. I am
completely lost here.

Also, the premise of a budding
politician, who will otherwise use
every means to get the votes he is
looking for, but is still so ‘aadashvadi’
that he gets pissed when his
girlfriend models for him in a two
piece in his hostel room. I mean,
DUDE, be realistic for god’s sake! The
girl wants you, she has the HOTS for
you, she tried to shag you in her
house when no one was around, and all
you can come up with is “mere
aadarsh”?! GET A LIFE!! And
frankly, if these are the slices of
life from Mr. Prakash Jha’s life (Jha
is the producer of the flick) I have
two words for him: OH PLEASE!!

I am not saying this is a bad
movie. I am only saying that if I was
still in my first year of college, I
could maybe identify with some things
there (hostellers RULE, as a thumb
rule), though I still did connect to
some of them (Delhi, for one). But
since they have claimed it to be a
youth movie, there has to be a
message, right? (Remember RDB? I am
not taking that movie as a reference
point, and in my opinion it wasn’t
such a great movie, but it DID move
people, killing or no killing) There
is no such message here. The movie
keeps shuttling between adolescent sex
lives, and college politics, and ends
up doing nothing to you. Plus, it
becomes repetitive after the first
twenty minutes or so. Yes, this could
have been a much better movie,
provided it had a better script. They
had the right actors in place; I’ll
give them that. But I came out of the
cinema hall with an empty, cheated
feeling.